Description
Book SynopsisBoym provides a view of Russia that is historically informed, replete with unexpected detail, and stamped with authority. Alternating analysis with personal accounts of Russian life, she conveys the foreignness of Russia and examines its peculiar conceptions of private life and common good, of Culture and Trash, of sincerity and banality.
Trade ReviewVisitors and outsiders have long lamented that the real lives of Soviet citizens were hidden behind a veil of official rhetoric. The private self was kept separate from the public self as a sort of defensive or coping mechanism. Boym, who was raised in Leningrad but has lived in the West for 13 years, analyzes the dichotomy between the common meeting places of public life and the no-places of private life and discerns a cultural tradition that still persists. Her themes are the communal apartment (which deprived all residents of a private life), graphomania (the compulsion to bad writing), and the spiritual self in Russian philosophy. Examples are drawn from film, literature, painting, and philosophy of the 19th and, primarily, 20th centuries. -- Marcia L. Sprules * Library Journal *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Theoretical Common Places Rubber Plants and the Soviet Order of Things Archeology of the Common Place A Labyrinth without a Monster The Mythologist as Traveler 1. Mythologies of Everyday Life Byt: Daily Grind and Domestic Trash Poshlost': Banality, Obscenity, Bad Taste Meshchanstvo: Middle Class, Middlebrow Private Life and Russian Soul Truth, Sincerity, Affectation Kul'turnost': The Totalitarian Lacquer Box Soviet Songs: From Stalin's Fairy Tale to "Good-bye, Amerika" 2. Living in Common Places: The Communal Apartment Family Romance and Communal Utopia Art and the Housing Crisis: Intellectuals in the Closet Welcome to the Communal Apartment Psychopathology of Soviet Everyday Life Interior Decoration The Ruins of Utopia A Homecoming, 1991 3. Writing Common Places: Graphomania History of the Literary Disease The Forgotten Classics The Genius of the People and the Conceptual Police Glasnost', Graphomania, and Popular Culture A Taxi Ride with a Graphomaniac 4. Postcommunism, Postmodernism The End of the Soviet World: From the Barricades to the Bazaar Glasnost' Streetwalking: Fallen Monuments and Rising Dolls Stalin's Cinematic Charisma, or History as Kitsch Trashy Jewels of Women Artists Merchant Renaissance and Cultural Scandals The Obscure Object of Advertisement Conclusion: Nostalgia for the Common Place Notes Index
